History on the Indian Women Rights in Canada. Social Sciences Paper

History on the Indian Women Rights in CanadaNameInstitutional AffiliationDate
The rights of the Indian women in Canada have gone through a number of changes. Most of these changes were driven by the need to recognize the rights of the Indian aboriginal women. The purpose of this essay is to discuss how the Indian women rights have evolved over a span of time in Canada. Most of the changes were driven by the Indian Rights for Indian Women Movement as well as other human rights advocacy groups.
The Indian Rights for Indian Women movement affected the rights of the aboriginal Indian women in a number of ways. The Indian Women movement pushed for a number of changes in the Indian Act to do away with discrimination. As Green (1985) discusses in her article, the Indian act was formulated in such a way that it promoted the discrimination of most of the Indian women. Indian Act of 1786 emphasized that patrilineal descent and legitimate birth were the only ways of determining Indian status (Green, 82). This act discriminated against the women in that it contained an assumption that women and children were the property of the husband. In another section that is Section 11 (1) (f), the Indian act provided that the non-Indian and the non-status women who were marrying Indian males took the status of the spouse. The act also discriminated against the Indian since it singled out a number of Indian classes for special treatment. The Indian Rights for Indian Women movement felt that there was need to bring changes to this legislation and bring an end to discrimination against the Aboriginal women. One of the most common fruit of the efforts made by the Indian women movement and other groups was the Drybones challenge to section 94 of the Indian Act CITATION Gre85 \l 1033 (Green, 1985). The act differentiated between the Indians drinking on and off the reserve. After complaints were raised by the movement and other human rights advocates, it was realized that the Section 94 of the Indian Act was against the Bill of Rights. Due to their success in bringing changes to this legislation, the women supported the Lavell and Bedard challenge to Section 12 (1) (b). Their efforts to challenge the Section of the constitution were not successful after the Canadian Supreme Court failed to rule in their favor. They went ahead to utilize international laws to challenge the various constitutional sections that discriminated against the aboriginal Indian women. From the above illustration, we can see that the Indian women offered the necessary support since they fought using different avenues for the laws of the aboriginal Indian women. Their efforts bore fruits since there were a number of changes made to the constitution.
After the failure of the Indian women to bring changes to Section 12 (1) (b), most of them began looking for alternative means of making the changes. Since the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled against them, they turned to international bodies. Such include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Economic Social and Cultural Rights found in the International Bill of Rights. Canada had also signed a protocol that stipulated that if anyone was dissatisfied with the ruling decision of the court of last resort which was th...